See Larry Wilmore Try to Take Over Stephen Colbert’s Late Show

On Thursday night, Late Show got a bit of a shake-up as Larry Wilmore took the stage to deliver the monologue in place of host Stephen Colbert. Wilmore had just gotten in a Coldplay joke when Colbert came out and discovered his fellow Daily Show graduate in his place. When Colbert greeted Wilmore and politely asked what gives, Wilmore said, “I’m sorry, man, I thought whoever leaves 11:30 at Comedy Central just gets The Late Show,” Wilmore said. As Colbert clarified, that’s not how things work—but Wilmore did stick around for his first televised interview following The Nightly Show’s cancellation.

Colbert and Wilmore started with the obvious elephant in the room: how the latter is feeling about his show’s abrupt end. “I’m very disappointed about it,” Wilmore said, adding that he thought his show would stay on through the election—but that he’s grateful for the opportunity he had, and proud of what he and his team accomplished. “We hadn’t talked to them for a while, so it was almost like you were in a relationship but you were the one that didn’t know it was over,” Wilmore said of his show's communication with Comedy Central.

He and Colbert also talked about executive producer Jon Stewart’s goal for The Nightly Show—to represent people, and viewpoints, who aren’t often given a chance to speak on television—as well as President Barack Obama’s legacy and coming departure, which Wilmore calls “the Unblackening.”

But the most fascinating portion came at the end, as the two swapped war stories about performing at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “I had news people flipping me off during it,” Wilmore said, “Which was great.” He and Colbert agreed it’s a very tough room—made even more intimidating by the fact that comedians have to stick around after roasting various public figures during their speeches. “Those people have nuclear launch codes, but they can’t take a fucking joke,” Colbert said.

After his own White House Correspondents’ Dinner speech in 2006—during which he mercilessly, famously skewered then president George W. Bush—Colbert said actor Harry J. Lennix, a classmate of his from Northwestern University, came up to compliment his speech. Colbert remembered telling Lennix that he didn’t think anyone liked his speech. “He leans back,” Colbert recalled, “and he goes, ‘Fuck these people. That was good.’ So, Larry, fuck these people. That was good.”